Michael Barrymore breaks down on Jeremy Kyle show telling how he was the love of his late ex wife's life

Former presenter and comedian was visibly tearful during ITV celebrity chat show special

Michael Barrymore broke down in tears as he told of the pain of missing his ex-wife Cheryl's funeral on The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Barrymore, 62, came out in 1995 - and as a clip from that year's National Television Awards where the Strike It Lucky presenter made an emotional speech referring to his sexuality was shown during this afternoon's chat show, Michael became visibly emotional.

“That was the night we were trying to get back together," Barrymore said of Cheryl, who was sitting in the audience at the ceremony as he thanked viewers for their support.

"We were trying to work out a way that we could do it and I don’t think she would accept that I was gay at all because we had a full life together, complete life.

"It just came to a head that night and I think because our lives were so exposed anyway whether it was by design or not.

"I said earlier, she said 'I made you, I’ll break you'. That was at the [Royal] Albert Hall and we never saw each other again until I got the phone call to say she had died. I didn’t even know she was ill.”

'We were trying to work out a way that we could do it and I don’t think she would accept that I was gay at all because we had a full life together, complete life'

Cheryl died in April 2005, with newspaper reports at the time claiming Michael - living in New Zealand at the time - was barred from attending her funeral.

Sobbing, he said: “I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral but I found out [when I came back to live in England about four years ago] and her sister Carol rang me up and said ‘I’d like to see you’ and she said ‘You know all those things in the paper about Cheryl not wanting you to come to the funeral, it’s all nonsense she never said that’."

"Everybody close to [Cheryl] who was still seeing her… said that she loved me until the day she died and she was constantly saying ‘how can we get him back on, what can we do’… It doesn’t sound like somebody to me - without going back over too much - that has been damaged by someone physically.